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ClownP writes with news that the U.S. Marshals Service is selling off 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins that were seized when the Silk Road website was shut down. At current exchange rates, they're worth around $17-18 million. The coins will be auctioned off in nine blocks of 3,000 coins, plus one block with the remainder.
The USMS said that the first deadline for bidders will be 9am Eastern Time on June 16, 2014. All bidders must complete the government's Bidder Registration Form, which requires that you provide a copy of a government-issued ID as well as a $200,000 deposit sent by wire transfer from an American bank. The government added that the highest bidder will win, and he or she cannot finance its payment in installments — the winner must pay the full amount in cash. The USMS added one final stipulation. "The USMS will not sell to any person who is acting on behalf of or in concert with the Silk Road and/or Ross William Ulbricht, and bidders will be required to so certify," the USMS stated.

You're a few decades too late on that one, the requirement to put up surety money to show you're not wasting the auctioneer's time is a long-established practice that arose because of more than a few spoilers who had no real intention of fulfilling their obligations and were effectively....damn, the word for it is on the tip of my tongue. You know, when you don't have the assets for anybody to make a claim on you regardless.

The problem arises not just from wasting the auctioneer's time, although that is certainly a problem. Allowing people not serious about paying also wastes the seller's time, the other bidders' time, the time of the banks and accountant of the other bidders if the price is high enough, and potentially the time of the courts. Another big problem is that it tends to waste the money of the winning bidder in favor of the seller as the only real reason to bid without th

The problem is not putting up surety money, the problem is auctioning off the assets in blocks so large that only very wealthy people or institutional investors can participate. That's what's antidemocratic about it.

You are missing the point of GPs statement. There is no reason all 29,656 have to be auctioned in a single block. There is no reason they couldn't be auctioned off in blocks small enough to let a person with far less be able to participate in trying to get some of the bitcoins they stole from a legitimate businessman.

Why did you bother to reply if you weren't going to even slightly address the point I made?

The point I made was not that requiring surety money is unreasonable -- it is reasonable. The point I made was that 3000-bitcoin blocks, which requires every bidder to have $1.5M in liquid assets in order to participate, is unreasonable when it would be almost as easy and much more democratic to sell them either individually or in 10-coin blocks. You could still have a surety -- again, that's completely reasonable! --

They could have split the 29656 BTC into as many lots as they wanted. They intentionally split it into a few lots worth over $1M rather than more blocks worth less. Arguing over the amount of the surety money is missing the point. $200K is a reasonable amount assuming the final bids will be over $1M, but that is just ignoring the question as to why the blocks are that large in the first place. The intentional decision to auction the bitcoins in the completely arbitrary size of 3,000 blocks presumably simpl

If they have 29,000 bitcoins, why do they have to sell them in such large chunks? Even switching to 29 lots of 1000 would open the door to significantly more bidders/When they bust a drug dealer, they don't sell his entire car collection in a single massive lot, so why are they doing such large bundles this time?

I think the government doesn't really want the public to have these bitcoins, and they are only selling them because they are legally required auction-off seized assets.Their ideal buyer would be so

That's a non-issue. The bitcoins are being auctioned in lots of 3,000 which means each lot is worth about 1.7 million dollars. Anyone who can afford to make a reasonable bid will have no difficulty putting up a $200k deposit.

But say you buy one bitcoin and then sell it later at twice the value, and then you wait for the value to drop again so you buy two bitcoins for the money you made off of one bitcoin. It's genius! Patent pending.

Not possible. You'll have to buy one block of 3000 bitcoins.... Let's start out with 3000 bitcoins. There's 3000 bitcoin. Do I hear 3001 bitcoin? 3001 bitcoin? 3001 bitcoin? Do I hear 3001 bitcoin? Sold for 3000 bitcoin to the man in the funny hat.

Even worse than laundering: the US government is ensuring that only the rich have access to these bitcoins sold at a reduced price.

The coins should be sold on the open market and the proceeds put in the same coffers as tax money to reduce that burden. Instead of doing that, they are ensuring that the wealthy can acquire more items of value that can then be directly liquefied.

Which "open market" should the government use? What system should they use to manage the sail of those coins? How should they ensure that the market they use is legit and secure? What process should they use to ensure that the Silk Road guys aren't just re-buying their stuff? Who will handle oversight to make sure this all goes off accordingly?

Pretty much answering any one of those questions would be a process that costs far more than the estimated value of the bitcoin they have.

Far better for them to use their existing process of auctioning off random shit they seize.

So, you're saying that when they seize some drug dealer's $5000 car they wait until they have a lot of 3,000 cars to sell off at once?

I ask because that's exactly as stupid and unfair as what they're doing here, which is excluding all "normal person" bidders by aggregating the bitcoins into huge lots instead of selling them individually for no good reason.

I didn't say anything about the intelligence of the process, or the fairness - just it is what it is.

They want their money as fast as they can get it, and couldn't care less about being "fair." They organize the sales of their items in whatever ways will make it more likely to sell and to make it as easy as possible for them to get rid of those things because they are not in the business of managing assets.

They are allowed to bundle things in a way that allows them to sell stuff and minimize overhead. To wi

You can sell something either at retail or wholesale. Retail has higher overhead so things cost more. And I am not sure how much retail business the government should be in.

To your point, when you sell cars at wholesale you tend to do it by the car. That is the natural lot size.

The government would only be favoring the reach and well-connected if the spread between auction price and the market price was higher – which can be hard to tell when you are dumping a huge supply of something – but the

I'm going by the stated intent to prevent that which is in the summary. I don't know if there are laws about those associated with a civil forfeiture being eligible to bid on items from that forfeiture, but it seems like that's the intent, and it seems like since it's stated there it would be something worth investigating if trying to set up an entirely new process for handling this kind of disposition of assets.

My point here being not so much "what is right" but more "there are a lot of questions to be ask

There are exchanges that handle that many coins daily: http://bitcoincharts.com/marke... [bitcoincharts.com] And three investment funds on Wall Street with more than that amount already.

All you need to do to not crash the price is arrange a private sale, or release the coins gradually. About 3800 newly created coins are generated every day, and the market absorbs that, so just keep your daily sales smaller than that, like 1000 a day or less.

Anyone? Really? You're gonna run down to Speedy Cash and get a loan for $200,000 just for the ability to place a bid? And, when you win at $500 per, they're going to give you another $1,300,000 to pay the balance? Let us know how that goes for you.

I don't want to get into the "is it money" argument but since this case is still pending [bloomberg.com] isn't it a bit premature to be selling assets of any kind until guilt is proven in a court of law? I guess we've completely trampled on the constitution here especially the fifth amendment.

Well that's the seizure portion of it and the recent Supreme Court ruling, one of the worst in history, [washingtonpost.com] doesn't say anything about the sale of those assets. That decision is so horrible because a lot of prosecutor's budgets are funded by seized assets creating a conflict of interest and violating the 5th and 6th amendments. We've seriously gone to far on the war on drugs and the police state mentality [distractify.com] in this country and it has to stop. If this guy is convicted then the assets obtained illegally should be forfeit, agreed but wait until the fucking trial is at least concluded and guilt or innocence is determined. Defendants also must have the right, as written in the 6th amendment to choose their own counsel and that requires funds to provide an adequate defense. If the assets are seized, then you have no right to chose your counsel creating a no win situation. That's a secondary consideration but as a citizen I'm very concerned that something like this could happen to me or my family and while I'm fighting in court the government is just selling everything off that we've worked our entire lives to acquire and protect. Right now the government has built a case but it's only been seen by a grand jury in the Ulricht case, that doesn't mean a conviction and selling the assets is a violation of his 5th amendment rights.

That's all well and good assuming Ulricht was actually claiming ownership over the said bicoins, but assuming the other commentors above are correct, he never claimed ownership over them. If true, the gov after a small amount of time waiting for someone to step forward, can then liquidate property. It makes sense a lot more when they're houses, boats and cars but the same applies to BitCoins.

Now in a situation where police break up a million dollar coke bust with a mil in coke and a million in dollar bills,

That's all well and good assuming Ulricht was actually claiming ownership over the said bitcoins

You know that's a good point but something a trial would surely explain. In this case the feds are acting the the role of judge and jury, sure if the evidence is there that Ulricht is the Dread Roberts and they can prove that the bitcoins are associated with illegal activities, forfeiture can occur. For all we know he was probably stealing the bitcoins from mgtox. [forbes.com]

Except, the distinction here is that Ulbricht is claiming that he is completely innocent, and has no part in the situation.
As such, the seized assets in this case are 'believed to be associated to Ulbricht, however are at present only known to belong to the previous "DPR", the former operator of Silk Road'. And no one else has stepped up to claim them, so the government is putting them up for auction, because why not.

Really, it is an interesting case... 100M equivalency of a cryptocurrency that the clai

the government has to prove that the 100m in bitcoin were used in illegal activities, that's for a court to decide not the police or the prosecutors. It's not like bitcoins can be impregnated cocaine residue [theguardian.com] to prove their connection to illegal activities. Nor does the possession of those indicate that something was done illegally. If that were the case we'd all be guilty of drug trafficking.

You mean like paying an undercover cop $80,000 equivalency from the same Bitcoin wallet that was seized to arrange to kill someone?

I completely agree with you that it is improper to conduct the auction before the trial because it sets a dangerous precedent that all it takes is a cop to lie for prosecutors to liquidate the assets of anyone they don't like.

The question is whether someone who claims to be innocent should have access to someone else's assets to mount their defense.

Should Ulbricht maintain that he is not DPR, his 5th Amendment rights are not being violated because he asserts that the property "wasn't his". Regardless, his 6th Amendment rights are not being violated because he has not been denied the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.

The only noteworthy thing here is that should he admit perjury that he is in fact DPR, or another party come forward and either party later be found innocent of any wrongdoing, the government would be required to provide whatever funds they generate through the auction back to the innocent party; something that incentivizes them to sell at below market value.

There's a matter of due process, sure. Go ahead and step forward as the owner of these coins. They won't sell them out from under you until they are done prosecuting you for claiming to have run Silk Road. Right now it's unclaimed property.

That pretty much renders moot the Crypto-currency's primary advantage of anonymity.

Could you even pretend surprise when the public purchase of a large block of the coinage placed you on the interesting list with the TLAs?

On the economic side of the equation, wouldn't they keep the price higher if they spread out the block auctions a bit more? That's a lot of coin to dump quickly.... unless taking down the coins value is the intent.

Okay - I take it back, and you will forevermore be considered "adorbs."

With regards to they (in this case law enforcement agencies involved in busting Silk Road) knowing everything:

I think as part of their investigation and bust of Silk Road, they almost certainly became aware of the identities of multiple people who are both interested and able and willing to buy the bitcoins at auction. I'm also willing to bet, given the strong libertarian/fuck the federal government bent of many people participating in b

Bitcoins will be transferred to winning bidders in the order that each winning bid was received. No bitcoin transfer will be made until the USMS has confirmed receipt of all purchase funds. The winning bidder(s) will be given private instructions related to the transferring of the bitcoins.

You'll note it doesn't provide a deadline for when the bitcoins will be transferred to the winning bidder. Hence, if it takes 60 days to transfer, BTC could be worth 1/10th of its current value. Would not touch this US Marshall's mess with a 10 foot fuckstick.

If it did as opposed to going to a standard exchange this would make sense. If it would normally just change them for Dollars at a bank at a KNOWN RATE then this Bitcoin auction makes no sense. The government may get only 50% of the value or less of these Bitcoins by doing it this way when a known US company such as Bitpay or Coinbase could do it for them at a pre-arranged rate.

To all those complaining about the minimum bid... I think that's fair. If they had a yacht, you would expect a minimum bid. If it was a piece of land, you'd expect a minimum bid. If it's some crypto currency worth 1.7mil.... You should expect a minimum bid.

If the US government seized Euros or Yen or Pesos or whatever, they would just convert them to USD through foreign exchange. Why aren't they simply converting these Bitcoins through a Bitcoin exchange into USD and getting their money that way?

Being able to pay for something with legal tender (US dollars) does not somehow make the things you buy with legal tender into legal tender itself. Nor does it somehow turn it into a currency. It sets no precedent.

Selling bitcoin - or ANYTHING ELSE - at an auction in exchange for US dollars does not set ANY kind of precedent establishing that bitcoin - or ANYTHING ELSE - is now legal tender. In fact, it establishes the opposite.

What WOULD set a precedent is if the government called up some suppliers and gave them bitcoin directly in exchange for things that aren't legal tender, because then they would be saying that bitcoin is the same as US dollars.

What they are doing here is saying "we have these bitcoins (and other things) and we would rather have US dollars, which are legal tender. We will give you these bitcoins for dollars, which we will then go and use like real money."

Selling bitcoin - or ANYTHING ELSE - at an auction in exchange for US dollars does not set ANY kind of precedent establishing that bitcoin - or ANYTHING ELSE - is now legal tender. In fact, it establishes the opposite.

You're right. It would make bitcoin legal tender only if you could pay for the auctioned bitcoins with... bitcoins. But then again, that would be pretty pointless, wouldn't it?

If the government sold US dollars for bitcoin, I would say that sets a precedent that they are treating bitcoin like legal tender. A weak precedent, since the argument could be made that they "sell" US dollars for fighter jets, and yet fighter jets are not legal tender.

If the government accepted bitcoin for other things they offer, I would say that sets a precedent that they are treating bitcoins like legal tender. That would be a much stronger precedent.

If the government purchased things with bitcoin directly - as in used it to settle debts - then that would be the strongest possible precedent (short of them flat out saying "bitcoin is now legal tender") that they are treating bitcoin as legal tender.

The government is not treating bitcoins like they treat legal tender, not in any way, shape or form. I know you're probably just being silly with the "buy bitcoin with bitcoin" line, but there are - as I pointed out above - ways that you could establish a precedent that don't involve sophistry.

Governments deal with foreign currency all the time, but as the other poster says, the IRS have already stated they consider BitCoin to be property rather than currency - and the government auctions property even more frequently than they auction foreign currency.

This isn't any different from them auctioning off any asset seized by law enforcement though.

They're basically treating bitcoins like anything else. It's the same as them auctioning off Beanie Babies or baseball cards. They want to convert things they take into US currency and auctions are how they get what the market will bear from it while doing so quickly.

Let me blow your mind right now: all currency is fake. That's what makes it currency instead of bartered goods.

This. Times a million

Every currency (Yes, Virginia, even gold-standard currencies) are completely fake and arbitrary. The difference between fake and arbitrary fiat currency and fake and arbitrary gold-standard currency is exactly one layer of abstraction, because the "value" of gold is in itself pretty arbitrary. It is somewhat rare, but it's "value" is completely generated by the human mind. Which is actually for the best--can you imagine how high the price of gold would be if it was actually useful for something besides making jewelry and helping Fox News scam old people out of their savings with terrible gold investment opportunities?

Humans assigned "value" to gold because it was rare-enough to avoid hyper-inflation, but common enough that you didn't have to worry about deflation. And that worked just fine for a few tens of thousands of years... until there were too many humans for the world supply of gold to adequately represent new wealth and value as they're created.

If a more numerous race of aliens had evolved on this planet they might have assigned value to blades of grass, pebbles, or certain kinds of trees in a similar matter based on their own needs.

Which is why the entire "gold standard" argument (that "our money is fake and worthless") is so stupid: Yes, it is fake and worthless. So is all other money, everywhere--the value comes from the perception. So it doesn't matter if its "backed by gold" or "backed by Jell-O Pudding pops" the fact is, the value is based totally on the perception of value of something. With fiat currency, it's the perception of the value of what you can buy, with "gold-standard" currency it's the perception of the value of the gold. But neither has any "real" value without that perception.

It's an auction of property they seized. If the property value is expected to sell for more money than you have, you will not be the highest bidder. This is the way auctions (government and non government) have been for just about ever. This has nothing to do with the rich or poor. There is no incentive to split them into 29,000 individual items either. That would be a waste of time and money.

Using an "exchange" would legitimize it as currency. Auctioning it treats it as property. Imagine the government was auctioning dollar bills seized in a drug raid, or tried trading seized sports cars for dollars on a currency exchange.

They take shit, they auction it off to the highest bidder. The government is not in the business of managing an inventory, they want to convert whatever they take into cash as fast and efficiently as possible.

They think 3000 coin lots is the most efficient way for them to sell them, and couldn't give a shit as to who buys them as long as they pass the vetting process.

Well, the owner of Silk Road would first have to actually claim the coins. Right now, no one is taking ownership of said coins so they are considered abandoned. The government is not a storage locker. You get a set amount of time to claim your property or its abandoned. It's the same as if your car was towed and you didn't come get it. Or if someone steals some of your stuff and is later caught by police. The police will hold the items until someone claims them or they are considered legally abandoned then auction them off.

As far as this move showing the feds find Ulbricht guilty without trial, he says he didn't run Silk Road so why would auctioning off SR assets matter to him? Ulbricht objecting to the sale would be as legitimate as me objecting to the sale. I don't have any rights to the coins, and he disavows any rights to them.

It's an auction. The great thing about an auction is it sets a data point for market value in the fact that people are paying for something in a competitive manner.

The size of the deposit does set a minimum expectation of the value of a block, although I've made deposits (much smaller ones) on auction items that went for less than the deposit. That's not common, but in the case that it happens the balance of the deposit is just returned to the buyer.

The coins aren't contained in the wallet as such, but rather they reside in the blockchain. The wallet holds the private keys that allow you to move coins away from their public address counterpart. Once that is done, it doesn't matter how many backups of that wallet there is, because the coins are already somewhere else - already locked to another private key in the blockchain. Also, his coins have already been "secured" (moved to another address), so there is nothing anyone can do.

You can transfer it to other addresses. Just because it's known that I own address A, doesn't mean it's known that I own address B. A transaction can be proved to have transferred from address A to address B, and that B now owns it, but there is no way to prove that the owner of address A also owns address B *without* gaining access to the local wallet file that contains the keys. This is how "offline" storage works. You generate a new address on a machine that never sees a network connection. The coin